A conservative victory in Wisconsin now is a done deal in the election to replace retiring uber-liberal Justice Shirley Abrahamson.

The bitterly partisan Wisconsin Supreme Court, which conservatives have controlled since 2008, has upheld several polarizing Republican-backed laws, none more so than former GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s law that essentially eliminated collective bargaining for public workers.

Well, the vote swing is also an interesting study.

In the 18-county Green Bay media market in northeast Wisconsin, the swing in the margin was roughly 20 points, according to incomplete returns, from a conservative deficit of more than 3 points last year to a conservative lead of roughly 17 points this time.

In the 11-county Wausau media market in north central Wisconsin, the swing in the court margin was 17 points, from a conservative deficit of 3 points in 2018 to an advantage of 14 points this time.

Those two regions, which happen to be areas where Republican Donald Trump performed well in 2016, also saw some of the state’s biggest turnout increases over April 2018 (a late pro-Hagedorn TV blitz invoked Trump in this race).  

The biggest swing was in Manitowoc County, along Lake Michigan, won by the liberal court candidate by almost a point in 2018 but by the conservative by 25 points on Tuesday. In another key county, Marathon in central Wisconsin, Hagedorn won by 19 points and more than 5,000 votes after the conservative candidate, Michael Screnock, lost by a percentage point in 2018.  

Of the 20 counties with the biggest swings in a conservative direction over the 2018 court race, all but two were in those two northern TV markets.

The race wasn’t even supposed to be all that close. Liberal groups deluged the state with ads backing Neubauer in recent weeks, including former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s organization, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the race. 

Hagedorn faced brutal coverage in state over his hostile views on gay rights and controversial writings as a law school student from a decade ago, and was largely left out to dry by conservatives until a last-minute injection of cash from the Republican State Leadership Committee. Even with that million-dollar investment from the RSLC, liberals outspent conservatives on the airwaves by a wide margin in the race, and strategists in both parties told TPM just days before the election that they expected Neubauer would win by a few points.

But in a result eerily reminiscent of the 2016 presidential election in the state, liberals’ heavy focus on social and culture war issues they believed would be disqualifying over pocketbook issues appeared to backfire, as a surge in the vote from more culturally conservative areas around greater Green Bay, exurban Milwaukee and Wisconsin’s Northwoods more than made up for big turnout in Madison, while Milwaukee’s turnout once again lagged behind the state.

Conservatives now control Wisconsin's Supreme Court 5-2.  The judges serve 10 year terms.

If one wants to make a prediction for 2020, and I don't, then these are interesting numbers indeed.  Wisconsin should be fun to watch from here on out.